Lynn Palmer interview (transcript)

Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 1
RANCH FAMILY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee: Lynn Palmer
Place of Interview: Park Valley School
Date of Interview: January 26, 2011
Interviewer: Randy Williams
Recordist: Randy Williams
Recording Equipment: Marantz digital recorder: model No: PMD660; Shure omnidirectional microphone: model no.MX 183
Transcription Equipment: Power Player Transcription Software: Executive Communication Systems with foot pedal
Transcribed by: Susan Gross
Transcript Proofed by: Randy Williams (3/28/2011); Lynn Palmer (July 2011: no edits)
Brief Description of Contents: Mr. Lynn Palmer discusses how his father and mother worked to be able to earn and maintain a ranch, and how in his adult life, he was able to work and also help his father maintain the family ranch. He talks about being able to take the family ranch over from his father and rural life in general. He talks about his enterprises with his brother on a local store, hotel and rock quarry, KOA campground; and his work as the school bus drive (like his parents).
Reference: RW = Randy Williams (Interviewer)
LP = Lynn Palmer (Interviewee)
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[00:01]
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 2
RW: Here we go. Well, it’s the 26th of January, 2011, and I’m in the Park Valley School [in Park Valley, Utah] with Mr. Lynn Palmer, who has just told me he’s a free man! He just got released from his church job!
[Laughing]
LP: Yep, I have been.
RW: How long were you the bishop [of the local LDS ward] out here?
LP: Five years.
RW: Is that pretty typical?
LP: It is, it really is. I’ve had some friends and relatives that’s been there a little bit longer, but not too many that has it less time. So, it’s been good.
RW: Well, congratulations.
LP: Yeah [laughs].
RW: I listened to your interview with Leslie Morris the other day.
LP: Okay.
RW: And that is an excellent interview.
LP: Okay.
RW: And so I think some of the things that you’d touched on with her I won’t –
LP: That’s good.
RW: And in that interview you really do a fantastic job with laying the history with your parents, and your grandparents, and some of the other families out here.
LP: Um-hmm, okay.
RW: So I think today I’d like to just start with you a little bit – just of your own, personal you know – you, and Lela, and your family – and talk about your ranching experience (more modern), and what you’re doing now.
LP: Okay.
RW: So let me just, you know – when were you born? And a little bit of background about you and your family. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 3
LP: Okay. I was born in Brigham City, on November the 19th, 1950. I am a twin – I have a twin brother. He lived out here for several years with his family.
RW: What’s his name?
LP: Lane Palmer; and he lived out here – like I said, for several years. And then kind of decided he better get in to where he could make more of a living. So, he actually moved to Tremonton for a while, and now he’s in North Salt Lake. And so he’s working down in that area.
RW: What’s your full name, Lynn? I should have –
LP: Lynn Ronald Palmer, yeah.
RW: Um-hmm. Are there other children, besides you and Lane?
LP: Yeah. I’ve got – actually, Rosalie (we call her Rosalie), but Rosa Thornley
RW: Your niece [that] is out here?
LP: Uh-huh.
RW: Here with us doing interviews.
LP: Yeah, she is. And her father is an older brother of mine. And then my oldest brother is Jim (or James), and he lives in Alpine, Utah, now. And then I’ve got a sister that raised her family over in the Burley area (Idaho), and now she’s moved down to West Jordan, and living down there.
RW: Are any of these siblings involved in the ranch world? Either in banking, or -- ?
LP: They really haven’t been. Rosa’s father was an auto mechanic for years and years. My oldest brother, Jim, he was actually in the military – he was an LDS Chaplin in the military; traveled around the world, and took his family around the world, and that. And then retired, and then went to work for BYU for the last few years that he was there. And my sister – her husband was a school teacher, and that. But my sister’s actually really interested in histories too, and I don’t know where I got it from, but I’ve been really interested in histories, and would like to spend some time now that I’m a free man –
[Laughing]
[03:24]
-- to kind of fill up that hole in my life right now that I’ve got, and try to do a few things that way too. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 4
RW: Well, a little bit about your growing up – you mentioned (before we went on tape) that you attended a school here, in Park Valley.
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Your mom and dad married, and your mom came out and taught at that school.
LP: She did.
RW: For some time.
LP: Yeah; she taught here, on and off, for probably 20 years, 25 years. And then she actually – when the kids would come along (us kids), well then she would quit for a few years. And then when we would get up to the age where we could kind of take care of ourselves, then she’d got back to school. A lot of times, when I was here she was here as a teacher – she was my second and third grade teacher here. And then she more or less retired.
And then my dad was a school bus driver here and started to drive school bus for, what – 1931-32. And he bought one of the first school buses; it was actually a bread wagon, and he converted it over (Harris Trucking there, in Tremonton) converted it over to a school bus. And it was actually one of the first school buses that was actually –
RW: Yeah, how does that work? I mean, now the school district provides the vehicle.
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: But back in that time, the –
LP: He was a contract school bus driver, and he had a contract with them. And part of the contract, it was actually he bought his own bus and supplied his own fuel, and everything there too. And he just drove the kids around. But he drove it for 32 years. And then my mother – he retired in 1965, and then my mother drove it for ten years, until she was 65, in 1975. And then I took it over from her, and I’ve driven it since 1975.
RW: Wow.
LP: And that – so, that’s kind of what has happened, as far as schools in our lives. I’ve always enjoyed driving the school bus. The kids have always been really good; I’ve only had one or two (over the last 35, 36 years) that I’ve had any problems with. Most of the kids, it’s just a real pleasure to drive the school bus, and watch them grow up, and leave.
RW: I’ll bet.
LP: And have their own families and that too, so it was good. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 5
[5:58]
RW: Now, with your parents and driving the school bus –
LP: Uh-huh?
RW: You know, they’re working at the school, there was always the family ranch?
LP: Yep.
RW: Let’s talk about that. [When] was that first started (you were telling in your history with Leslie) back a generation or two before you?
LP: Yeah, well it was just my parents that –
RW: That’s right, you’re mom and dad.
LP: That bought it. When they got married dad was working in the mines. Dad had actually gone to Utah State University (back when it was called the Agricultural College, the old AC), and he got two educations, or two diplomas – in two different areas. And they’re different than what we’d ever think of now. One was in farriering (which is horse shoeing), and the other one was in blacksmithing. And they kind of went hand in hand.
And then as soon as he graduated from them he came out here and was hired on as the main blacksmith in the Century Mine project.
RW: And where was the mine at here?
LP: It was on the west end of the mountain range, about five miles west – hmm, probably more than that; probably six, seven miles west – of the town of Park Valley.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Up on the Raft River Mountains, but on the west of the Raft River range.
RW: What were they mining?
LP: Gold. It was actually a silver mine; my dad always claimed that it was a silver mine, but they actually mined gold out of it, and a lot of silver. And then along in the – oh, latter 20s – then the mine (because of the slippage in the earth, or a fault in the earth) they run out of gold, run out of the ore vein. And so then they just had to go in –
RW: Did they run out, or did they lose the vein?
[08:06] Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 6
LP: They lost it. But they explored up and down – horizontal and vertical – trying to come up with it, and apparently it had slipped enough that they never did find it. And then they had problem with water in the back end of the tunnels. And so it was costing them quite a little bit to get the water out of the tunnels, so then they had to quit and that.
RW: I see. So that’s when your father –
LP: Yep.
RW: . . . and your mother bought a ranch?
LP: Yeah. He had got married to my mother in the early 30s.
RW: And what are your parents’ names?
LP: My father was Rutger Ernest Palmer, and my mother was Leticia White Palmer. She grew up in Brigham City, and her parents were some of the early pioneers that started Brigham City. And so she came out here, and they met each other. She was staying in the old Goodleaf[??] hotel, down here on the corner, just south of the school, and they met.
As happened a lot of times, the school teachers would come to Park Valley, and the ranch boys would say, “Oh, they look pretty good.” I think there was probably five or six of the school teachers that came out here that ended up married some of the ranch boys. And that’s what happened with them.
And no sooner after that (of course, he couldn’t go back up to the mine) –
RW: So – but your dad was from Park Valley?
[09:37]
LP: He was.
RW: So his family is here?
LP: Yeah. My grandfather came into Park Valley – well, emigrated from England – in 1880s. And then they were sponsored by a couple of families over in Cache Valley, in a little town called Cove, Utah. And they worked there for about a year, year and a half, working off their sponsorship (the money that those people had put into them). In the meantime, my grandfather bought the old ranch out here. And so then he moved the family out here; had 10 children, and moved out here and took over the ranch.
RW: What was the name of the ranch your grandfather purchased?
LP: You know, I’m not right sure, but it was a part of a big ranch that actually went down onto the desert. But he just bought, I think two sections of ground (or 1,200 acres or Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 7
ground) around there. And raised his whole family on there. And then they got married and moved away.
But my dad – he was actually born in the old house up here.
RW: When you say, “Up here,” where – at your grandparents’ ranch?
LP: My grandparents’ ranch (which my oldest brother, Jim, owns now).
RW: I see.
LP: He come back and bought it.
But my dad was born just at the turn of the century – December the 28th, 1899, was when he was born. So he would be 110 years old right now. And he was left an orphan when he was 18 years old. Of course, that’s not too young of an orphan, and he did really well. But some of the old, original families out here (the Larsens and the James’s) helped finish raising him out, and his younger brother, and took care of them. And he herded sheep, and worked on the ranches.
RW: Um-hmm. So he had picked up these ranching skills by the time he purchased his?
LP: Um-hmm. Yeah, he did.
RW: On his ranch, was he running any sheep, or was it all cattle?
[11:55]
LP: He run a few sheep there all along. We had a little sheep pasture, and a little pond there, that the sheep would water at (it came out of a natural spring). He run them. But he started out – he was on the streets of Brigham City (my mother and my dad) was on the streets of Brigham City, and they knew the Sealy’s (that actually owned the ranch) –
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: But it was during the Depression and hard times. And they actually lost the ranch to the bank. But the same day that they turned the ranch over to the bank, there was my mother and dad, and brother Sealy said, “I think that if you went in there and talked to the bank president,” (at the old First Security Bank there, in Brigham City), “I think that you could take over that ranch with not too much down on it.”
So my dad and mother went right to the bank, they knew the banker. Went in there and told them that they had just talked to Mr. Sealy up on the street there, and was wondering if there was a possibility. So he started the paperwork. It ended up that my mother put up her wages (which was $300 a year, to be the school teacher out here), plus her life insurance policy that she had got (it was worth $300). Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 8
RW: And what year was this?
LP: About 1931-32.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: Thirty-three; somewhere in there. And so that’s what they used as collateral to buy the ranch. They kept the payments up and enlarged it. When the government started to move some of their property in isolated areas (there was a couple of piece there that my neighbors and my dad was interested in), so they went and purchased them.
RW: How do people find out about that? Was it through auctions? How would your father have known about these government sales?
LP: Actually a cousin of mine (which would have been a nephew of my dad’s) was in that type of business, was in the real estate business in Salt Lake. And he notified both sides of his family: his mother’s side was the Morris’s, and his dad’s side was the Palmer’s. So he notified our neighbors to the west, and then my dad. And then he worked out the deal on getting the ranch enlarged a little bit on some summer property.
RW: I see.
[14:33]
LP: Up on the mountain. And then he just went ahead and kept taking care of it; a meager living. The ranches out here – I think they’re doing okay right now, but you have to sharpen your pencil pretty sharp (or your calculator, or computer, or whatever it is), to keep them. And so my dad picked up this bus job with the county, and then my mother taught school as much as she could. And then even at times when they were building this highway through here, and putting the blacktop down – my dad would go and hire out to them, driving some of their equipment.
RW: Um-hmm. So your dad, it sounds like, all along was doing ranching and something else?
LP: Um-hmm, yep.
RW: For supplemental income?
LP: It was.
RW: For insurance, for other –
LP: Yep. And that’s one of the main reasons; that’s the only reason why I really keep my bus driving job now, is the medical insurance, and that is helping me get through it too. But I inherited the ranch after my mother passed away, when she was 97. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 9
RW: How does that work? Did you have a family trust with your other siblings?
LP: My mother actually set up a family trust, and kept updating it. And when she passed away, well then we met with her lawyer. And the trust was read to me and my siblings. And it said in there that I was supposed to take over the ranch. And so I did; some days I feel as though it was kind of curse that was put on me, because the living is kind of meager at times, too.
RW: [Laughs] Uh-huh. With a situation like that, I’m assuming at the time of your mother’s passing, you had the son (or the child) that had stayed?
LP: Yeah.
RW: And so that’s the natural direction it would go.
LP: Yeah.
[16:37]
RW: I know when we were talking with other people, you know, those situations are quite unique, and various, and different for each family.
LP: Yeah.
RW: You know, some buy out, some they give all the share, and the sibling has to buy out from his –
LP: Yeah, yep. Yeah. And it’s handled in different ways. My mother – she first of all set up a will. But in talking with some legal people, sometimes those wills aren’t the best; so she went ahead and set up a trust. And set it up – oh, it’s probably been 20 years ago now, that she set it up. And she passed away, what – three, four years ago now. And that’s the way she’d set it up.
But looking down the road for me on the ranch – I’ve got back problems: I’ve got a disc degenerative disease in my back. And so I’ve got one of my sons that I’ve already talked to (he was just married last spring, in June), and they’re already talking of coming out. I think what I’m going to do – and I’ll talk to some people, some tax people, and whatnot – but I think as close as I can, I’m just going to turn it over to him. Just write the deeds over to him, and work it out that way to where he takes it over here, probably within the next year or two.
RW: I see.
LP: I wish I would have inherited it 20 years ago; it would have really been a joy for me to have worked on the ranch, and taken care of it. Of course, on all ranches you have the Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 10
cattle, you have the fences to keep the cattle in, you have the maintenance of the property itself, and that; the hay land that you put up hay to maintain the cattle in the winter time, and the horses, and whatnot. I think I would have really enjoyed it, back here a few years ago. But where I’ve got this disease in my back – everything I do is painful.
And, so I’m looking forward to the time when I can turn it over to my son and his wife and family. And then for me to just to drop back and work on it at my leisure. And I think I’ll enjoy it.
RW: Right.
LP: I really will.
[19:03]
RW: Well, let’s talk about over the years with you and Lela, your wife.
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Have you been always a partner with your parents? Always working the ranch with your parents?
LP: I have. I came off an LDS mission in 1971; I went to BYU long enough to find my wife, and then we were married and came out here (chose to come out here). But mainly just working with my mother and dad, and then later on in years my mother – to try to keep the ranch a-going, and that, with other jobs that I’ve had over the year.
I went for about eight months and worked on the pumping project, when the Great Salt Lake was –
RW: Right, back when it was so high –
LP: When it was flooding the airport, and Salt Lake City, I went down and worked on the pumping station.
RW: During Governor Bangerter’s years?
LP: Yep. Went down and worked on it for about six or eight months. It really helped out financially for the family. My twin brother and I – rather than coming out and say, “Here we are folks, move over; we want to help you on the ranch and give us a living” – we actually started a little grocery store and convenience store down here, just south of us here, too.
And we worked it, and then we built a motel that went along with it, and a little KOA campground that went along with it, too. And then, later on we could see that our families were enlarging, and we needed to kind of split it up; so we went ahead and split it up. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 11
And I took the store and the little garage over; and then my brother took the motel, and took the old store property that was down here, and built a café in it.
And so they all complimented each other, and was nice. I held it, and kept it as part of our living for 30 years. But just here, about three or four years ago, we found a man that wanted to buy it, and we sold it to him. And then [we] took the money and went to Logan and bought an apartment building just off the USU campus there. And so we can go to the mail nowadays and get our check, rather than having to put all those hours in on that.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: But in the process, of us taking caring of it (of course, we were taking care of it for my mother and my dad) – the ranch.
RW: So along with these other sub-businesses, you were always ranching?
LP: Um-hmm, yep.
[21:43]
RW: You were working with your parents –
LP: Yep.
RW: And as they were aging, I assume you are doing more of the work?
LP: Yep, we were. They were – my dad was 50 when I was born, and my mother was 40; and so when I became a teenager, my folks were getting well-on in age, and were retiring from their jobs. And so I grew up with older parents, but I’ve grown up with a value of history.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Because, while my folks were older, and we didn’t have television back then, our telephones weren’t brought into here until the [19]‘60s. So, in the ‘50s, while I was a young boy, my folks would get in the car, and they would go see some of their best friends around the valley here, and sit and talk. And kind of interesting – they would tell different stories of life in their early years. And I would sit there and listen to that, and became really interested in the history of the Park Valley area and how it was settled, and the hardships that people had in the ranching business, and that, too.
And I would often hear them say, “Boy, isn’t time flying by so fast?” And as a little four, five, six year old boy there, we would scratch our head and say, “My gracious, those folks are getting old!” But you know, the older I get (now that I’m 60 years old), I can see exactly what they’re saying – time is starting to move faster, and that. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 12
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: They would always talk about different things in the ranch. My dad actually, when he took the ranch over from the bank, the Sealy’s had it (they had tried to save the ranch by selling what they could off the ranch), and they ended up by selling all the cattle, and all the livestock off the ranch.
So when my dad took over the ranch there, he didn’t have much of an income off of it. But with some good, good friends and neighbors around the area: one would give him a bull, another would give him two or three cows. And he finally accumulated around 150 head of cows over the years. And it was enough to make a living.
But one thing that I have noticed, that we are losing in a little ranching area like this: those people back then had a completely self-supporting environment on the ranch.
RW: I remember you talking about that with Leslie. [Mr. Palmer was interviewed previously by Leslie Morris.]
LP: Yeah.
[24:31]
RW: Orchards and the gardens and the hogs.
LP: Yeah.
RW: And the skills to produce it all.
LP: And chickens; they would buy little chickens that would come in through the postal service, there. And we would go to the post office, and hear those brand new chickens there. And we would take them over, and put them in a little brooder house that we had, with a little hood.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And keep them warm. And then raise them up, until they became – we would either choose whether they were going to be laying, and lay eggs for us, or else we would butcher them and use them to eat.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: But you know we’re losing that now. I let the old orchards go, and we had two of them over on our ranch. And let the orchards die. I still have a garden here, but we don’t have a garden over there.
RW: With the family, the gardening, and the ranch – Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 13
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: And the orchard, and all that – now you have – was it yourself, three brothers, and a sister?
LP: Yeah.
RW: So, how did the chores – were the older siblings doing more ranch work, and the younger children doing more home, garden, orchard work?
LP: Well, when I was born my youngest sister next to us in age, was 12 years old.
RW: Oh.
LP: And of course, she had her chores. Yeah, we all had our chores divided up amongst us; and I think she took the chickens, and we would – as we would get older, we would take over some of those things from her.
My oldest brother was 16 when I was born, and just started at Box Elder High School, in Brigham City. And then my next brother was two years younger (Rosa’s father); he went in when he was a freshman, and wanted to play football. So he left right shortly after my older brother.
So it was mainly left up to my sister, 12 years older than us. And of course, it didn’t take long and she was away to high school, too. And then it was left, just my parents and some little scrub twins running around, and helping with the chores.
Some of the chores would be chopping wood for our old wood stoves. Or my mother used to cook over those old, wood-fired ranges, out in the kitchen there. And of course, we had to keep enough wood in there to make sure that she could cook with it all the time. And so it was part of our responsibility to go and help our father gather wood in the fall of the year.
We have an abundance of juniper wood around, and also quaking aspen, pine up in the canyons. And so we would take off three or four days in the fall of the year, and go and gather that wood, and bring it. And then my dad had what we called and old buzz saw: it had a great, big huge blade that was probably three feet acrossed, hooked up to a tractor, and the tractor would spin the blade, and you would push the wood through it and saw the wood. And that was part of our chores.
RW: Um-hmm.
[27:43] Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 14
LP: And it would be a great, big pile of wood: probably eight, ten feet high, and just even through the pile is probably 10-15 feet through it. And that would be our supply of wood. And then they had a fireplace in the living room, and it would keep the house warm (before we got electric heat in there). And of course, it was less expensive than the electrical heat.
RW: How did it work, with your parents and you, you know – over the years as you got older – with the ranch, if you’re driving bus two times a day –
LP: Uh-huh.
RW: Who you know, especially during the busy time of the ranch, how did that all work out? With your calving or branding?
LP: Dad was usually around, but we all just pitched in and helped. I can remember getting up and walking about a quarter of a mile through the cedars, to the west of where the house was, where we had some heifers (some new heifers) that we needed to check, and make sure that they were going to calve okay. And so we would walk over there, and take a flashlight (or by moonlight), walk over there and count the cows. And if there was any of them down, trying to calve – well then, we would run back and get our dad, and he’d go over there, and we’d help her out. And a lot of times we’d get back over there, and she’d have had the calf while we were in the rush –
RW: [Laughing] Getting your dad.
LP: Of getting dad up and going, and that. We had an old time pump – you hand-pump the water for them, and then we had hay that we put up, loose –
RW: Do you still do your own haying?
LP: Yeah, yeah.
RW: Do you have one or two – how many hay fields do you have? What are your growing?
LP: It’s actually grass hay; we call it meadow hay.
RW: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
LP: And it’s the old, original wire grass. But then we’ve gone in and introduced some other grasses in with it, and some clovers. But it’s just one field – probably 150 acres of hay land.
RW: How much are you putting up?
[29:57] Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 15
LP: It depends; and that’s another hard part of ranching, is that we all have water rights out of these canyons –
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: But on our canyons, there, that we own the water rights out of – they just come out of the canyons, and run down a ditch. And so in the heat of the summer, depending on how much water comes out, and how much snow is placed up there in the winter time, and how much comes out in the spring – depends on how much hay you put up.
RW: I see.
LP: And that; so last year I had to buy about 75 ton of hay from a man over in Cache valley, to subsidize what hay I put up. We used to put it up loose, and then my dad bought a small, square baler.
RW: I see.
LP: And we would put it up that way, with hay wagons, and throw it up, off the ground, onto the hay wagons, and then it would go into the stack yard, and re-stack it into the stacks.
RW: Uh-huh. How big – are these manageable bales, that you can throw, or are you using some kind of piece of equipment to lift them?
LP: No, you just manually pick them up off the ground.
RW: Okay, uh-huh.
LP: And stack them.
RW: Because you see these humongous bales these days.
LP: Yeah, yeah.
RW: That weigh tons.
LP: And that’s what I’ve had to do, because of my problem with my back, is as soon as I took over the ranch, there, I went and bought a big, round baler.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: And then a tractor to pull it; and so –
RW: And so you’ve got the big, round bales now?
LP: Uh-huh. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 16
RW: That you can just roll on out –
LP: Yeah.
RW: When you’re feeding?
LP: It’s fun to do that, actually; you just go and clamp onto one of them, with a little hay feeder that I’ve got on the back of the tractor.
RW: Uh-huh.
[31:36]
LP: And take out, cut the strings, and then you let the bale down on the ground; it rolls out, just like your carpet does. And the cows just start eating it.
RW: How long does something like that last?
LP: Balers, or – machinery, hay?
RW: You laying it out? Is it going to last a day? Is that going to be gone in two days?
LP: It will be gone in about an hour.
RW: Hour?
LP: Yeah.
RW: Wow.
LP: Usually, we figure somewhere with the cattle – they’ll eat somewhere between 20 and 25 pounds of hay, per cattle – or, per cow.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Each day. And it kind of depends on if they have a calf on them, what their size are. But yeah, you can roll out one of those 1500 pound bales, and 100 head of cows will eat it within an hour, it’s all slicked up.
RW: Wow. What are you raising?
[32:30]
LP: As far as the breed of cows: Angus, primarily. My folks always had the Herefords; they had horned Herefords for a long time, and then they decided to go to pulled[??] Herefords. And then when my brother got married, his father-in-law had Angus bulls. And so we bought a couple Angus bulls from him, and so we’ve gone Angus. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 17
Actually, they feed out a little bit better, and you get a little bit more when you take them to the sale, and sell them that way, too. So, we’ve gone – I can probably count on two hands how many brown cows, Hereford cows that I’ve got in the herd now; all the rest of them are black.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And they’re hardy.
RW: Black Bally? Is that what you get when you cross the two?
LP: Yeah, you do; you get white-faced, black cows.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And they grow really fast; probably the best. They actually grow better that way, than if you have straight black, or if you have straight brown Hereford or Angus.
RW: Um-hmm. With the breed, do you have your own bulls?
LP: Uh-huh. Yeah, we go and buy our own bulls, we always have. I’ve thought about going in and artificially inseminated them; have a man come and do that, and then learn how to do it myself, and then go ahead and doing it myself. And I could, with the small amount of cows – around 100 head, you could do that fairly easy. But I think I’ll stick with buying bulls. We usually like to get somewhere around 15.
RW: So 15 to 100?
LP: No, you would have probably 15 cows to a bull; 15 to 20 cows to a bull.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: Especially on the range, in the summer time – where they’re scattered out over 1,000 acres.
RW: Uh-huh. What does your rangeland like? Are you running on deeded and BLM?
LP: Uh-huh. Primarily, all of it is deeded property, there; I think I’ve only got seven cow allotment on the forest, and the rest of it is private land. And that’s kind of limited me a little bit to how many cows I can put on there, but still I like to keep that little forest permit, because it allows me to run a few over on there. And whether they’ll ever increase your amount that you can put on there, I don’t know.
RW: How does that process work, to increase, to get a little bit more public lands, to graze?
[35:08] Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 18
LP: It’s pretty tough; somebody has to sell out, and want to sell their –
RW: Um-hmm; so are you around your allotment, are there others that have some allotments themselves?
LP: Um-hmm, yeah.
RW: And so you would have to buy – kind of checkerboard, and get so that they’re all together?
LP: Yep, yeah. Our neighbors, all the way around us, actually own forest permits on the forest, and they’re pretty stable right now. But even seven head is better than nothing. And they don’t charge that much for a summer’s rent on putting them on National Forest now, so it works out good.
RW: Do you have any BLM land?
LP: No. No, I don’t.
RW: With your situation with both the haying, and all the work with calving, and preg-checking, and you know, feeding –
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Are you doing that alone, or is your son coming to help, or are you hiring people?
LP: I’m hiring people to haul my cattle to the sale. I go to a commission auction, usually in either Logan or Smithfield, or over in the Burley area. And so I hire them to –
RW: Um-hmm – so you’re not selling through Superior? You’re taking –
LP: No. I would like to get up to that point, where I’m selling to Superior.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: Because they seem to be more secure; you have a little bit more say on what you get, rather than just showing up at the commission yard and say, “Give me what you want to.”
RW: Right.
LP: You actually have a say. And when I get my cattle up, a little over 100 head, to where I’m having a stable calf crop of an even calves –
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Where they’re born all pretty much the same time, and have an even weight on each on of the calves – around 100 head – then I’m going to definitely go with Superior, or some Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 19
other company that I can depend on the price being a little more stable than that other. But right now it’s working out fine.
Cattle prices seem to be up pretty good. Of course, hay prices are too. So I’ve got some projects going, hopefully within the next year or two, that I’d like to develop. That water coming out of the canyons, that we own the water rights to – maybe put it into some sprinkler systems, to where the water is a little bit more stable. I’m going to get away from paying six, eight, 12, $15,000 for hay each year, and be able to raise my own hay. And then that money that I would have used to buy the hay, I could just put into the ranch, and make it more profitable that way.
But yeah, I’m having my son, and my kids all come out. I have three girls, and two boys, and they’re all – all except my youngest one – they’re all married, and got grandkids (they’ve got kids). And so they all come out and help me gather the cows, and brand them.
RW: What’s your brand?
[38:23]
LP: It’s what we call the “V Open A”.
RW: Can you write that for me on your release form?
LP: Yeah. And so if you can turn the brand completely over, and it looks the same way. It is a V with an open A.
RW: I see.
LP: And so you can turn the brand over, and it’s still the V and an open A.
RW: Uh-huh. Do you earmark?
LP: No.
RW: Or tag?
LP: We tag the cattle – or the calves – and put a number in their tag of the year that they were born, and then which one they were.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Like, if they were the 15th one we tagged, well their number is – like this year would be 11-12, and that, that we would use on them.
RW: Um-hmm. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 20
LP: And it works out pretty good when they grow up, the tags hopefully will stay in their ears. I keep as good of books as I can on the computer, and which ones are calving, which ones are not, how old they’re getting, when I need to sell them, and whatnot. But the small amount of cows that I’ve got now, I hope I can get it up to where it can sustain the family. My son is actually, will be taking over the ranch. He’s actually got such a good job right now, and it’s with the agricultural end. He works for Western Ag Credit.
RW: Oh.
LP: That is a loan agency.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: And a finance company for ranches and farms, and that, too. And so he’s kind of got into that. My oldest son actually works as a USDA meat inspector for – and works there in Hyrum.
RW: Okay, right; at Miller’s?
LP: Yeah; he’s actually the main supervisor over the USDA inspectors now. So my two boys have kind of gone into the agricultural end, and they come out as much as they can to try to help me out. Hopefully this younger son that’s married will come and take it over for me.
[40:34]
RW: Where will they live when they come on out?
LP: He will probably keep his job for as long as he needs to. He will live in the old house, my parent’s old house (the house that I grew up in); it’s comfortable, and he’ll probably live in it as long as he needs to. And then they’ve already got plans for a new home, right there in the old orchard, just south of that house. So they’ll live right there.
RW: Now, one of the things that’s been interesting this last – almost two years – that I’ve been doing these interviews is, many people do quite a bit to hold onto their lifestyle, and their ranching.
LP: Um-hmm, yep.
RW: Can you talk a little bit about that?
LP: Well, there’s the morals, the ethics in ranching, and farming – you’ll get them other places, but in big business it’s just not there anymore. And so, if you can hang onto that type of a living, type of a lifestyle; I was raised here, my dad was raised out here in a ranching situation, and I’m hoping that I can turn it over to where my family can continue Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 21
that way, because there’s nothing like having a chore to do in the morning, or at night, to teach you responsibility, of being dependable and going to work.
I’ll tell you a little story – we had some cattle in this other corral (that I was talking a few minutes ago about), and we needed to go over there and pump them some water. Well, it was pretty important that we take care of our livestock on the ranch, and dad instilled that in our minds, that we needed to do that. And so I’d gone to bed one night, without watering those cows (and pumping the water with an old hand pump), and giving them enough water to drink.
In the middle of the night, I had a dream that I got up, got my clothes on, and walked over there, and pumped them the water; it was instilled in my mind so strong. And so then I came back, took off my clothes, jumped into bed. And the next morning (and I had made a deal with my dad that if I watered the calves, then I would stack some rocks there, by the old pump, so that he would know that they were watered). And if he went and watered them before I got there, well he was going to stack some rocks up.
Well, I went and climbed into bed that night, and the next morning my dad came in and he says, “I don’t think you went and watered those cows in that corral there, and they’re thirsty. Could you run over and see first thing this morning?” So I jumped up and went over there. And there was rock stacked on the edge of the well, where I had got up. And that was proof to me and my dad that I had got up in the middle of the night, sleep-walking (more or less) and walked over there.
But it was instilled in our minds that way, and I think that’s a good basis of life, is the dependability that you’re going to do something when you’re asked to do it. And people can hang onto that, even after they leave the ranching business. If they choose to get an education, and get out into the world, at least they’ve got that ethics, and those morals, that they’ll stick with it. Like the old saying goes, “You can take a boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”
RW: Right.
[44:28]
LP: And he’ll instill those, and have those same abilities if he decides to be a corporate lawyer in the world, someplace in the world – he’ll still have those working habits, and work hard for it. I think that’s one thing. And then just the good, old hard work, I think is good for us all.
We’re having to take better track, and keep better books now days. When my grandfather came out here – yeah, he had some cattle, but he had a self-supporting ranch, with eggs, and milk, and meat, and whatnot on the place, to where the money was kind of an extra Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 22
thing, that he paid taxes with. But now days, with the cost of fuel, and the cost of power, and all of these costs, and we’re all running to town, rather than raising our own things in our gardens – we need to keep good books. If we don’t keep good books, it’s going to be pretty tough for us to keep these ranches afloat.
RW: Um-hmm. You know, one of the things I’ve noticed, talking to different ranchers, is the cost of fuel –
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Is really a big thing on a ranch.
LP: Yeah, it is.
RW: Because so much of your equipment.
LP: Yeah.
RW: And also, going back and forth to town when you’re so isolated.
LP: Yeah.
RW: Going to the doctor.
LP: Yeah.
RW: Going into – when you, you know, your kids’ maybe, music lessons.
LP: Yep; dance lessons.
RW: Can you talk a little bit about the access that you have now, maybe, versus what your grandparents or parents – the mobility?
LP: Yeah. Well, my dad – and I’ll tell a story, and it’s kind of a church-type story. He told me, he says – you know, when I was growing up, and the cars were – we could go into to town at least once a week. When I was really young, I can remember only once a month going in and buying supplies that we needed. We didn’t really need them.
But when he was growing up, they had the buggies, and the wagons that they had to get into town. The railroad came in, and they could use it – but it still cost them to go in. So a lot of times it took them at least two parts of days, anyway, to get into Brigham City. And so they would go as far as they could the first day, and plan on camping out on the north end of the Great Salt Lake there, at a fresh spring that they had there. And then the next morning, they’d go up, and go on into Brigham City, and spend a week, and then come back. And they’d leave one of the kids home to take of the chores, and whatnot. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 23
Well, people would get sick back then, and of course the only doctors were in Brigham City-Tremonton area. And this is one point I wanted to make: when they went to take them in, they would always give them a priesthood blessing, before they ever moved them, and started out, because they knew it was going to be a long time. And this is the point I wanted to make, too, along with it – dad said, “Now days if somebody gets sick, we throw them in the car, get them to the doctor, wait until they get stabilized, and then maybe give them priesthood blessing after that.” And he says, “It’s sure turned around from what it used to be. We always used to depend on other means to survive.”
RW: Um-hmm.
[48:05]
LP: And doctors are great; we need to get in and eventually see the doctors anyway. But my dad was born in the old house up here, helped out with a midwife (one of the ladies around that did that). Now days we rush them into the doctor and hope we make it in time, and whatnot.
And so the mobility of getting in, and access different things now days is – within an hour I can be to Tremonton.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: In a nice, comfortable car, in the winter time. I don’t know if our grandparents would appreciate seeing all of this; they probably would, really, because they would have liked to have seen progress. It was a lot harder, and we didn’t get into town. Even as a kid, when I was growing up in the ‘50s there, like I said – we would get into town, maybe once a month, to buy a few things.
RW: When you went to high school –
LP: Um-hmm?
RW: You went into Brigham, or Tremonton, to go to [high school]?
LP: Tremonton.
RW: Tremonton.
LP: Yeah.
RW: So it was you, and your twin brother both went – I’m assuming?
LP: Um-hmm, um-hmm.
RW: Where did you live? Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 24
LP: I lived with Rosa’s father, my older brother [Paul Palmer].
RW: Did you?
LP: Right there.
RW: Did you, and your brother, both?
LP: Uh-huh. But my older brothers and sisters – they went to Box Elder High School in Brigham City.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And my grandma was there.
RW: I see.
LP: My mother’s mother was there.
RW: Okay.
LP: And she was about a block away from the high school. And so they would go in, and so sometimes they wouldn’t get back out here, back then, for you know, every weekend (like we do); they’d have to catch a ride.
RW: So when you were a boy, did you come back every weekend and help out?
LP: Pretty much, um-hmm.
RW: Because I’m thinking, you know, your older siblings –
LP: Um-hmm?
RW: There were some at home still, but when you and your brother left, your parents were out here alone.
LP: Yep.
RW: Did they have to hire out during those years, more?
LP: No; Dad tried to take care of it, as long as his health stayed there, and mom would be right out there in the field to help him out, feeding the sheep, doing all the chores. But then if they needed us – of course, we had the telephones then, they’d telephone us, and we’d run out in the car and help them out for a day or two, and skip school. But most of the time they did okay. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 25
RW: Did the school system allow for some of these ranch families to be able to keep their kids home at different times, when they were needed?
LP: No, we were treated like everybody else; if we got behind, we had to make it up too.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And had to make it right with the schools and that.
RW: Did you have to miss some school, though, off and on?
LP: Occasionally, yeah.
RW: Um-hmm.
[50:51]
LP: Occasionally, during this time of the year – in January, February, March – when dad was calving the cattle out, then we’d have to come out and spend a couple of days, and help him (and of course, every weekend). And we looked forward to it. I couldn’t have found a nicer thing to do on the weekends by staying in there, than I could by coming out here. And get some good, home-cooking (although Paul’s wife, you know, was a good cook too), but still there is nothing like coming home and having mom’s home cooking.
And when we went back into school, we felt like we’d accomplished something. We’d been out here, had some fresh air, done some good, hard work, and was ready to go back to school.
RW: In the community here in Park Valley, what community cohesiveness – I mean, is there 4-H?
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Can you talk a little bit about the ranch community activities that go around with ranching?
LP: Um-hmm. Okay, I actually brought a picture up. We formed a livestock 4-H club when I was what – 12, 13. My folks actually went to the county extension agent and asked if we could set one up. And so we set it up there. And the picture that I brought was, we had our own little livestock show, and kind of our own, little community fair one day out here, and it was held over in an orchard. And we would bring our calves, or our lambs (or whatever we had), our pigs, or whatever we were raising as a project, and bring them to that little orchard there, and that certain day. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 26
And then we had somebody – our 4-H leaders were Ed and Diane Mott that lived over on the Muddy Ranch. And they were really good leaders, they were just super; I learned so much from them.
RW: What kinds of things? What did you learn? What did you do?
LP: Well, how to ration feed out, how much grain you should feed, how much hay you should feed.
RW: Did you go out to their ranch to learn these things?
LP: No, they came around to our ranches, and actually looked at our projects. We would either have a calf, or a lamb in a pen, in under the shed, or somewhere – and they would come and say, “Well, you need to put a little more grain into them.” Or, “Put a little more grass into them.” Or, “You need to feed them a little more water.”
When the sugar factory was going there, in Garland there, we’d get beet pulp, and bring it out, and feed it along with them: any kind of supplement that we could use, and then we would feed them out. We’ve changed the breed of animals; we’ve gone from good, old Hereford calves, to a lot of Angus calves anymore, and maybe some of the hybrid calves, too. And then we’ve gone (from when I was growing up) to Hampshire lambs, to Suffolk now, and a little bit of Southtown, and some other breeds in them too.
[54:18]
But we would have this day that we would bring all those animals there, and we would have a judge that would come out from Tremonton, Brigham City area. And they would set them up, and show us how to show them – fitting, and show them, and ship – that we would have there. We would have a little food stand there, and we’d all eat at a certain time of the day, and it was really fun. And our 4-H leaders pretty well set it up, and we all were a part of that.
RW: How many children were at the school then? Was it much bigger than now? Did you have a bigger –
LP: About the same.
RW: Was it?
LP: I would think that our population, here at the school, has been primarily the same way all through the years.
RW: How many children are at the school now? Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 27
LP: I think somewhere in the 50s, or 60s. It’s always been kind of that way; when I was a kid, about that same number. And that goes from kindergarten, through the tenth grade. And then, of course, like we talked – we would go into high school at the eleventh and twelfth grade.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: It’s been pretty stable; the same all the way through. I think they have somewhere around 50, 58 kids that are students that are here right now, and two teachers.
RW: And you’re pooling from Park Valley –
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Are you getting kids from Rosette, or anywhere else?
LP: Yeah. I used to go clear out to the Muddy Ranch –
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And pick up the students that were out there, and then I’d bring them in, and just work my way in – stopping at homes, and bringing them in. Right now, I’m just going out into the Dove Creek area, which is a little (kind of subdivision) that –
RW: Yeah; I was real surprised today, when I showed up here – there’s two buses!
LP: Um-hmm, yeah.
RW: How does that work? Does one of you go to –
LP: My wife goes east, and down to the Kelton area.
RW: Okay.
LP: And picks up the kids from the east, and brings them to school; and then I go to the west and pick up the kids from Rosette and that Dove Creek area.
RW: Okay.
LP: And bring them to school. And we meet here about the same time. My wife is the cook, here at the school, also. She’s also a registered nurse, and has worked with the Bear River Health Department. She gives them their shots at times of the year. She helped the ladies out here, for a long time, with the WIC program.
RW: Does she have like, hours, that people can come in and apply for WIC, and get their vouchers? Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 28
LP: Um-hmm, yeah.
RW: Interesting. I know she’s also been instrumental in the – not the ambulance, but the –
LP: With the EMT system.
RW: EMT, yeah.
LP: With the EMT system.
RW: Yeah, I’m going to do some e-mail questions with her.
LP: Yeah. She started that out. A lady that she was in school with (at Holy Cross Hospital), and nursing school in Salt Lake – a lady asked her to come out and teach a first aid class first. And then after that, well then they developed the first – there was enough interest that they developed an EMT course. And then an Intermediate EMT course; and I think that’s what they have out here now.
My wife worked on it for, probably 20 years.
RW: Interesting.
LP: And then got to the age that she wanted to kind of give it up, and there was enough interest with the younger people out here, that they picked it up and did that. But she enjoyed that part of her life. I sometimes think that I took her out of a really important thing that she had in her life.
She came out of Rexburg, Idaho area, and went down as a young girl, and got her RN license. And then I let her work until I met her.
RW: [Laughs]
[58:18]
LP: It had been two years after she graduated, and she was working in Intensive Care, with open-heart surgery patients; really knew her stuff, really well. And I married her, and brought her out here; and she’s really tried to do what she could in the medical field, to try to help out the community, and help people out coming through here. But I feel as though that I kind of took her out of a thing that was really in her heart. And she wanted to; but she’s enjoyed coming out here, too, being able to deal with it.
Of course, like I said a few minutes ago, she’s had to pick up a teaching aide job up here. And then when that started to go away, then she decided more stable to be the cook. So now she’s the cook for the school; cooks for those 60 kids, and a few teachers every day. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 29
RW: So she’s up in the morning, driving bus, doing the cooking, and then driving the bus at the end of the day.
LP: Yeah.
RW: And you’re driving bus morning and evening?
LP: Yeah, taking care of the ranch.
RW: And taking care of your ranch. You know, right now you’ve got your cattle, and you’ve got some sheep?
LP: No, we sold out the sheep several years ago; my dad – right after he passed away. They’re a little more temperamental, and take a little bit more work.
RW: I see.
LP: And that, so we sold them several years ago. So all I’ve got is cattle, and of course, a few horses.
RW: Um-hmm. Do you work quite a bit on horseback?
LP: No, that’s kind of gone away. I can’t do it myself, but I’ve still got four or five horses there, that we can ride. I get my son and daughters, and their families, and they get on the horses, and use them. I’ve got my “Japanese horse,” I call it (my ATV).
RW: [Laughs]
[60:11]
LP: And I jump on my Japanese horse and run around. And when I’m out here on my own, that’s my only way that I can check on the cattle up on the mountain, or fix fences, and whatnot.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: It’s actually quicker than horses, although horses still have their places on ranches.
RW: Um-hmm. Well, we were talking about the 4-H when you were a boy –
LP: Um-hmm?
RW: What kinds of traditions, activities in the valley do families participate in, that have a function on the ranch?
LP: 4-H was actually the main one away from the church, that wasn’t sponsored by the church. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 30
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: In small communities like this, the church is kind of the sponsor of the sports programs.
RW: Um-hmm. Let’s talk about that then; let’s talk about the church and the different activities that it offers.
LP: Yeah. It has their sports activities there: you play basketball, softball, volleyball, and whatever.
RW: Who are they playing?
LP: We would go into Tremonton, into Garland area, and play the teams there. Through the school we actually played some of the neighboring schools, basketball; and we had our track meets here. We still have track meets out here, that we enjoy going to (they do field events, and running, and whatnot), and that’s still sponsored through the school. But then the sports activities mainly have been through the church.
RW: I see.
LP: And of course, our road shows, our drama, and part of the church involved with that. We always have had a 24th of July celebration – a pioneer celebration, if you will, out here. It’s getting bigger all the time. We have our park and our bowery here that we use, our rodeo grounds. We have a good dance the night before, with a band that comes in and plays live music for us. We will dance, we have a steak fry. Of course, being in the business, we like to have our beef steaks. So we have beef steaks here.
RW: Where does the beef come from? Does somebody donate?
LP: Yep. Last year the hamburger was all donated by a family out here that raised – it was a leppy calf.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: He didn’t know who the owner was – it could have been mine, it could have been his, it could have been my neighbor’s, or it could have been another one of our neighbors. He just took it, and raised it out from a little leppy calf, up until about 700 pounds. We butchered it, and used all the hamburger out of it for our celebration, so it didn’t cost us.
The steaks that we get is actually bought from a man that comes out here, and has a portable butcher plant. He brings a truck out here, and actually kills the animals, and hangs them up, and skins them out, and hangs them in a cooler until he gets into to town. And they hang for – oh, a couple of weeks – and then you call in and tell them how you want your beef cut up. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 31
RW: So you are selling the majority in an auction, but you’re holding back one, two?
LP: We are; we save enough beef for us. In fact, my daughter and her husband live up in Heber, and they’ve kind of got a family project, with the Park family (with my daughter’s husband’s family), where they buy 13 or 14 calves from us, and they’ll take them up and put them on the little place they’ve got up there (the little farm). Throw them some hay that’s extra hay (they’ll buy that hay from their dad). And then they’ll throw that in there, and they’ll raise out their calves.
And they just butchered them this fall – nice, big 1200 pound beef, that’s taken them about a year to raise out. And so they’ve kind of picked up with that kind of an idea, that’s pretty good stuff, to have a good beef steak every once in a while. So, they’ve picked that up. And then I keep two or three beef for the remainder of my kids, and for myself. We always have what beef we need. And of course, I like my ham too.
RW: [Laughs]
LP: And my bacon, and whatnot, and my chicken, and that. So we’ll pick that up other ways.
RW: I see.
LP: And that, too. I wish I could raise them out myself, but I’d have to buy them, and then buy feed to feed them right now. So the cost effectiveness of it isn’t good. So it pays for me to buy it this other way. But where I’ve got beef, I like to –
RW: Do you ever trade out with folks? Has that ever been something that ranchers in your area have done?
LP: Like for different other services?
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: I do. You know, we’ve got an orthodontist and dentist in the Brigham and Tremonton area (he’s in both areas, has an office in both of them). And when my kids needed braces for their teeth, we would say, you know, “How much is the bill going to be? Would you take a half a beef for that?” And he’d say, “Yes.” And he’d take that half a beef off the bill that we owed for the braces on the teeth, and then he’d spread the beef around amongst his staff in the doctor’s office. And so we’ve done that before, too.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: I haven’t done anything else with trading.
RW: That’s neat.
LP: It is. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 32
[65:57]
RW: Well, I’ve been asking folks, you know, what do you see in the future of ranching? From your perspective? You’ve seen a change –
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: From being a little boy.
LP: Yeah.
RW: Especially like, with the video auction, or with various other kinds of things.
LP: Yeah.
RW: What do you see as the future of ranching?
LP: I still think it’s strong. I think that we have to sharpen our pencil, or get the calculator out to make sure that we’re going to balance the books, anymore, and keep that pencil pretty sharp. But I think there’s definitely a need for ranching. I think that we’ve got our fast food, little stands there, that we all love our hamburgers. And I think there’s – and other countries has even picked that up. And so I think that’s it’s a needful thing.
I think right now, if you sharpen your pencil good and sharp, and try to do some projects on your ranch, that is going to feed your animals a little bit longer (and help you out that way), you start developing some programs that is developed through the universities and the extension deal; they’ve been proven, you might as well use some of those. Like we were talking a few minutes ago – going from cows that get less money out of their calves, to cows that you know, Angus calves, that would bring you a little bit more.
And the calf market – we always wish it would be higher, but right now (this last fall) I took some calves to the sale, to the auction, and I caught it just on the right day, and I got the most that I’ve ever got out of calves. I got $1.60 a pound. But I was looking on the internet (which most of us have internets), and this is new technology. And I was looking on the internet on this Burley Livestock Auction that some of us take our cattle too. And they’re still up around $1.60-$1.65 a pound.
So they’re staying up there good enough, that I think that if we are wise in our expenditures, and wise in how we use our money, and try to save as much as we can for lean years, I think we’re still going to be good. I’m really hopeful. I wouldn’t have my son leave a bank executive part that he has right now, and come out here, if I didn’t think that it was going to be that way.
He might have to hang onto that job for a few years, until he gets far enough ahead; maybe a house built, and a little bit of money in the bank (to take care of lean years). But Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 33
I’m confident that if we can keep working on our numbers, on our cattle; maybe have to buy a piece of ground to add to the ranch, so that we can increase our herd a little bit. And then improve our water, to where we can put up our own hay – become a little more self-supporting.
I’m sure that’s it’s going to be a good business for a long time; I would hope. Of course, ranchers and farmers are the most optimistic people in the world, I think.
[Laughing]
[69:22]
And so I think if we keep that attitude, along with a little help along the way (with the economics), and watching where we spend, and try to develop some of these ideas that I’ve said – I think that we’re going to be fine.
RW: Well, thank you.
LP: Yeah.
RW: Well, as you’ve been thinking about us coming out here, are there some things that you wanted to share, that I haven’t asked you?
LP: I think I’ve pretty well covered them.
RW: Okay.
LP: I think I have.
RW: Okay.
LP: Inheriting, or taking over a ranch that my dad had bought is really good for my mind, my thoughts – that I’m able to do something that my dad did, and maybe do it a little bit better (hopefully), than what he did (even though he did really well).
But like I was saying through our conversation: the work ethics, the morals that ranchers/farmers has, being good neighbors to their neighbor, helping their neighbor out – I think if that would spread around the world a little bit more, now days, I think that we would all be a little happier. We could turn on the evening news and see a lot more positive than what we do now days, with the world that it is.
I’m just glad to be in the occupation that I’m in.
RW: Well, thank you. I really appreciate, not only your interview today, but helping me set up all these other interviews. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 34
LP: You bet.
RW: You’ve been instrumental.
LP: Yeah.
RW: I’ll turn this off, and we’ll sign these release forms.
LP: Okay.
[End recording – 70:56]

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Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 1
RANCH FAMILY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee: Lynn Palmer
Place of Interview: Park Valley School
Date of Interview: January 26, 2011
Interviewer: Randy Williams
Recordist: Randy Williams
Recording Equipment: Marantz digital recorder: model No: PMD660; Shure omnidirectional microphone: model no.MX 183
Transcription Equipment: Power Player Transcription Software: Executive Communication Systems with foot pedal
Transcribed by: Susan Gross
Transcript Proofed by: Randy Williams (3/28/2011); Lynn Palmer (July 2011: no edits)
Brief Description of Contents: Mr. Lynn Palmer discusses how his father and mother worked to be able to earn and maintain a ranch, and how in his adult life, he was able to work and also help his father maintain the family ranch. He talks about being able to take the family ranch over from his father and rural life in general. He talks about his enterprises with his brother on a local store, hotel and rock quarry, KOA campground; and his work as the school bus drive (like his parents).
Reference: RW = Randy Williams (Interviewer)
LP = Lynn Palmer (Interviewee)
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[00:01]
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 2
RW: Here we go. Well, it’s the 26th of January, 2011, and I’m in the Park Valley School [in Park Valley, Utah] with Mr. Lynn Palmer, who has just told me he’s a free man! He just got released from his church job!
[Laughing]
LP: Yep, I have been.
RW: How long were you the bishop [of the local LDS ward] out here?
LP: Five years.
RW: Is that pretty typical?
LP: It is, it really is. I’ve had some friends and relatives that’s been there a little bit longer, but not too many that has it less time. So, it’s been good.
RW: Well, congratulations.
LP: Yeah [laughs].
RW: I listened to your interview with Leslie Morris the other day.
LP: Okay.
RW: And that is an excellent interview.
LP: Okay.
RW: And so I think some of the things that you’d touched on with her I won’t –
LP: That’s good.
RW: And in that interview you really do a fantastic job with laying the history with your parents, and your grandparents, and some of the other families out here.
LP: Um-hmm, okay.
RW: So I think today I’d like to just start with you a little bit – just of your own, personal you know – you, and Lela, and your family – and talk about your ranching experience (more modern), and what you’re doing now.
LP: Okay.
RW: So let me just, you know – when were you born? And a little bit of background about you and your family. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 3
LP: Okay. I was born in Brigham City, on November the 19th, 1950. I am a twin – I have a twin brother. He lived out here for several years with his family.
RW: What’s his name?
LP: Lane Palmer; and he lived out here – like I said, for several years. And then kind of decided he better get in to where he could make more of a living. So, he actually moved to Tremonton for a while, and now he’s in North Salt Lake. And so he’s working down in that area.
RW: What’s your full name, Lynn? I should have –
LP: Lynn Ronald Palmer, yeah.
RW: Um-hmm. Are there other children, besides you and Lane?
LP: Yeah. I’ve got – actually, Rosalie (we call her Rosalie), but Rosa Thornley
RW: Your niece [that] is out here?
LP: Uh-huh.
RW: Here with us doing interviews.
LP: Yeah, she is. And her father is an older brother of mine. And then my oldest brother is Jim (or James), and he lives in Alpine, Utah, now. And then I’ve got a sister that raised her family over in the Burley area (Idaho), and now she’s moved down to West Jordan, and living down there.
RW: Are any of these siblings involved in the ranch world? Either in banking, or -- ?
LP: They really haven’t been. Rosa’s father was an auto mechanic for years and years. My oldest brother, Jim, he was actually in the military – he was an LDS Chaplin in the military; traveled around the world, and took his family around the world, and that. And then retired, and then went to work for BYU for the last few years that he was there. And my sister – her husband was a school teacher, and that. But my sister’s actually really interested in histories too, and I don’t know where I got it from, but I’ve been really interested in histories, and would like to spend some time now that I’m a free man –
[Laughing]
[03:24]
-- to kind of fill up that hole in my life right now that I’ve got, and try to do a few things that way too. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 4
RW: Well, a little bit about your growing up – you mentioned (before we went on tape) that you attended a school here, in Park Valley.
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Your mom and dad married, and your mom came out and taught at that school.
LP: She did.
RW: For some time.
LP: Yeah; she taught here, on and off, for probably 20 years, 25 years. And then she actually – when the kids would come along (us kids), well then she would quit for a few years. And then when we would get up to the age where we could kind of take care of ourselves, then she’d got back to school. A lot of times, when I was here she was here as a teacher – she was my second and third grade teacher here. And then she more or less retired.
And then my dad was a school bus driver here and started to drive school bus for, what – 1931-32. And he bought one of the first school buses; it was actually a bread wagon, and he converted it over (Harris Trucking there, in Tremonton) converted it over to a school bus. And it was actually one of the first school buses that was actually –
RW: Yeah, how does that work? I mean, now the school district provides the vehicle.
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: But back in that time, the –
LP: He was a contract school bus driver, and he had a contract with them. And part of the contract, it was actually he bought his own bus and supplied his own fuel, and everything there too. And he just drove the kids around. But he drove it for 32 years. And then my mother – he retired in 1965, and then my mother drove it for ten years, until she was 65, in 1975. And then I took it over from her, and I’ve driven it since 1975.
RW: Wow.
LP: And that – so, that’s kind of what has happened, as far as schools in our lives. I’ve always enjoyed driving the school bus. The kids have always been really good; I’ve only had one or two (over the last 35, 36 years) that I’ve had any problems with. Most of the kids, it’s just a real pleasure to drive the school bus, and watch them grow up, and leave.
RW: I’ll bet.
LP: And have their own families and that too, so it was good. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 5
[5:58]
RW: Now, with your parents and driving the school bus –
LP: Uh-huh?
RW: You know, they’re working at the school, there was always the family ranch?
LP: Yep.
RW: Let’s talk about that. [When] was that first started (you were telling in your history with Leslie) back a generation or two before you?
LP: Yeah, well it was just my parents that –
RW: That’s right, you’re mom and dad.
LP: That bought it. When they got married dad was working in the mines. Dad had actually gone to Utah State University (back when it was called the Agricultural College, the old AC), and he got two educations, or two diplomas – in two different areas. And they’re different than what we’d ever think of now. One was in farriering (which is horse shoeing), and the other one was in blacksmithing. And they kind of went hand in hand.
And then as soon as he graduated from them he came out here and was hired on as the main blacksmith in the Century Mine project.
RW: And where was the mine at here?
LP: It was on the west end of the mountain range, about five miles west – hmm, probably more than that; probably six, seven miles west – of the town of Park Valley.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Up on the Raft River Mountains, but on the west of the Raft River range.
RW: What were they mining?
LP: Gold. It was actually a silver mine; my dad always claimed that it was a silver mine, but they actually mined gold out of it, and a lot of silver. And then along in the – oh, latter 20s – then the mine (because of the slippage in the earth, or a fault in the earth) they run out of gold, run out of the ore vein. And so then they just had to go in –
RW: Did they run out, or did they lose the vein?
[08:06] Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 6
LP: They lost it. But they explored up and down – horizontal and vertical – trying to come up with it, and apparently it had slipped enough that they never did find it. And then they had problem with water in the back end of the tunnels. And so it was costing them quite a little bit to get the water out of the tunnels, so then they had to quit and that.
RW: I see. So that’s when your father –
LP: Yep.
RW: . . . and your mother bought a ranch?
LP: Yeah. He had got married to my mother in the early 30s.
RW: And what are your parents’ names?
LP: My father was Rutger Ernest Palmer, and my mother was Leticia White Palmer. She grew up in Brigham City, and her parents were some of the early pioneers that started Brigham City. And so she came out here, and they met each other. She was staying in the old Goodleaf[??] hotel, down here on the corner, just south of the school, and they met.
As happened a lot of times, the school teachers would come to Park Valley, and the ranch boys would say, “Oh, they look pretty good.” I think there was probably five or six of the school teachers that came out here that ended up married some of the ranch boys. And that’s what happened with them.
And no sooner after that (of course, he couldn’t go back up to the mine) –
RW: So – but your dad was from Park Valley?
[09:37]
LP: He was.
RW: So his family is here?
LP: Yeah. My grandfather came into Park Valley – well, emigrated from England – in 1880s. And then they were sponsored by a couple of families over in Cache Valley, in a little town called Cove, Utah. And they worked there for about a year, year and a half, working off their sponsorship (the money that those people had put into them). In the meantime, my grandfather bought the old ranch out here. And so then he moved the family out here; had 10 children, and moved out here and took over the ranch.
RW: What was the name of the ranch your grandfather purchased?
LP: You know, I’m not right sure, but it was a part of a big ranch that actually went down onto the desert. But he just bought, I think two sections of ground (or 1,200 acres or Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 7
ground) around there. And raised his whole family on there. And then they got married and moved away.
But my dad – he was actually born in the old house up here.
RW: When you say, “Up here,” where – at your grandparents’ ranch?
LP: My grandparents’ ranch (which my oldest brother, Jim, owns now).
RW: I see.
LP: He come back and bought it.
But my dad was born just at the turn of the century – December the 28th, 1899, was when he was born. So he would be 110 years old right now. And he was left an orphan when he was 18 years old. Of course, that’s not too young of an orphan, and he did really well. But some of the old, original families out here (the Larsens and the James’s) helped finish raising him out, and his younger brother, and took care of them. And he herded sheep, and worked on the ranches.
RW: Um-hmm. So he had picked up these ranching skills by the time he purchased his?
LP: Um-hmm. Yeah, he did.
RW: On his ranch, was he running any sheep, or was it all cattle?
[11:55]
LP: He run a few sheep there all along. We had a little sheep pasture, and a little pond there, that the sheep would water at (it came out of a natural spring). He run them. But he started out – he was on the streets of Brigham City (my mother and my dad) was on the streets of Brigham City, and they knew the Sealy’s (that actually owned the ranch) –
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: But it was during the Depression and hard times. And they actually lost the ranch to the bank. But the same day that they turned the ranch over to the bank, there was my mother and dad, and brother Sealy said, “I think that if you went in there and talked to the bank president,” (at the old First Security Bank there, in Brigham City), “I think that you could take over that ranch with not too much down on it.”
So my dad and mother went right to the bank, they knew the banker. Went in there and told them that they had just talked to Mr. Sealy up on the street there, and was wondering if there was a possibility. So he started the paperwork. It ended up that my mother put up her wages (which was $300 a year, to be the school teacher out here), plus her life insurance policy that she had got (it was worth $300). Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 8
RW: And what year was this?
LP: About 1931-32.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: Thirty-three; somewhere in there. And so that’s what they used as collateral to buy the ranch. They kept the payments up and enlarged it. When the government started to move some of their property in isolated areas (there was a couple of piece there that my neighbors and my dad was interested in), so they went and purchased them.
RW: How do people find out about that? Was it through auctions? How would your father have known about these government sales?
LP: Actually a cousin of mine (which would have been a nephew of my dad’s) was in that type of business, was in the real estate business in Salt Lake. And he notified both sides of his family: his mother’s side was the Morris’s, and his dad’s side was the Palmer’s. So he notified our neighbors to the west, and then my dad. And then he worked out the deal on getting the ranch enlarged a little bit on some summer property.
RW: I see.
[14:33]
LP: Up on the mountain. And then he just went ahead and kept taking care of it; a meager living. The ranches out here – I think they’re doing okay right now, but you have to sharpen your pencil pretty sharp (or your calculator, or computer, or whatever it is), to keep them. And so my dad picked up this bus job with the county, and then my mother taught school as much as she could. And then even at times when they were building this highway through here, and putting the blacktop down – my dad would go and hire out to them, driving some of their equipment.
RW: Um-hmm. So your dad, it sounds like, all along was doing ranching and something else?
LP: Um-hmm, yep.
RW: For supplemental income?
LP: It was.
RW: For insurance, for other –
LP: Yep. And that’s one of the main reasons; that’s the only reason why I really keep my bus driving job now, is the medical insurance, and that is helping me get through it too. But I inherited the ranch after my mother passed away, when she was 97. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 9
RW: How does that work? Did you have a family trust with your other siblings?
LP: My mother actually set up a family trust, and kept updating it. And when she passed away, well then we met with her lawyer. And the trust was read to me and my siblings. And it said in there that I was supposed to take over the ranch. And so I did; some days I feel as though it was kind of curse that was put on me, because the living is kind of meager at times, too.
RW: [Laughs] Uh-huh. With a situation like that, I’m assuming at the time of your mother’s passing, you had the son (or the child) that had stayed?
LP: Yeah.
RW: And so that’s the natural direction it would go.
LP: Yeah.
[16:37]
RW: I know when we were talking with other people, you know, those situations are quite unique, and various, and different for each family.
LP: Yeah.
RW: You know, some buy out, some they give all the share, and the sibling has to buy out from his –
LP: Yeah, yep. Yeah. And it’s handled in different ways. My mother – she first of all set up a will. But in talking with some legal people, sometimes those wills aren’t the best; so she went ahead and set up a trust. And set it up – oh, it’s probably been 20 years ago now, that she set it up. And she passed away, what – three, four years ago now. And that’s the way she’d set it up.
But looking down the road for me on the ranch – I’ve got back problems: I’ve got a disc degenerative disease in my back. And so I’ve got one of my sons that I’ve already talked to (he was just married last spring, in June), and they’re already talking of coming out. I think what I’m going to do – and I’ll talk to some people, some tax people, and whatnot – but I think as close as I can, I’m just going to turn it over to him. Just write the deeds over to him, and work it out that way to where he takes it over here, probably within the next year or two.
RW: I see.
LP: I wish I would have inherited it 20 years ago; it would have really been a joy for me to have worked on the ranch, and taken care of it. Of course, on all ranches you have the Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 10
cattle, you have the fences to keep the cattle in, you have the maintenance of the property itself, and that; the hay land that you put up hay to maintain the cattle in the winter time, and the horses, and whatnot. I think I would have really enjoyed it, back here a few years ago. But where I’ve got this disease in my back – everything I do is painful.
And, so I’m looking forward to the time when I can turn it over to my son and his wife and family. And then for me to just to drop back and work on it at my leisure. And I think I’ll enjoy it.
RW: Right.
LP: I really will.
[19:03]
RW: Well, let’s talk about over the years with you and Lela, your wife.
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Have you been always a partner with your parents? Always working the ranch with your parents?
LP: I have. I came off an LDS mission in 1971; I went to BYU long enough to find my wife, and then we were married and came out here (chose to come out here). But mainly just working with my mother and dad, and then later on in years my mother – to try to keep the ranch a-going, and that, with other jobs that I’ve had over the year.
I went for about eight months and worked on the pumping project, when the Great Salt Lake was –
RW: Right, back when it was so high –
LP: When it was flooding the airport, and Salt Lake City, I went down and worked on the pumping station.
RW: During Governor Bangerter’s years?
LP: Yep. Went down and worked on it for about six or eight months. It really helped out financially for the family. My twin brother and I – rather than coming out and say, “Here we are folks, move over; we want to help you on the ranch and give us a living” – we actually started a little grocery store and convenience store down here, just south of us here, too.
And we worked it, and then we built a motel that went along with it, and a little KOA campground that went along with it, too. And then, later on we could see that our families were enlarging, and we needed to kind of split it up; so we went ahead and split it up. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 11
And I took the store and the little garage over; and then my brother took the motel, and took the old store property that was down here, and built a café in it.
And so they all complimented each other, and was nice. I held it, and kept it as part of our living for 30 years. But just here, about three or four years ago, we found a man that wanted to buy it, and we sold it to him. And then [we] took the money and went to Logan and bought an apartment building just off the USU campus there. And so we can go to the mail nowadays and get our check, rather than having to put all those hours in on that.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: But in the process, of us taking caring of it (of course, we were taking care of it for my mother and my dad) – the ranch.
RW: So along with these other sub-businesses, you were always ranching?
LP: Um-hmm, yep.
[21:43]
RW: You were working with your parents –
LP: Yep.
RW: And as they were aging, I assume you are doing more of the work?
LP: Yep, we were. They were – my dad was 50 when I was born, and my mother was 40; and so when I became a teenager, my folks were getting well-on in age, and were retiring from their jobs. And so I grew up with older parents, but I’ve grown up with a value of history.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Because, while my folks were older, and we didn’t have television back then, our telephones weren’t brought into here until the [19]‘60s. So, in the ‘50s, while I was a young boy, my folks would get in the car, and they would go see some of their best friends around the valley here, and sit and talk. And kind of interesting – they would tell different stories of life in their early years. And I would sit there and listen to that, and became really interested in the history of the Park Valley area and how it was settled, and the hardships that people had in the ranching business, and that, too.
And I would often hear them say, “Boy, isn’t time flying by so fast?” And as a little four, five, six year old boy there, we would scratch our head and say, “My gracious, those folks are getting old!” But you know, the older I get (now that I’m 60 years old), I can see exactly what they’re saying – time is starting to move faster, and that. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 12
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: They would always talk about different things in the ranch. My dad actually, when he took the ranch over from the bank, the Sealy’s had it (they had tried to save the ranch by selling what they could off the ranch), and they ended up by selling all the cattle, and all the livestock off the ranch.
So when my dad took over the ranch there, he didn’t have much of an income off of it. But with some good, good friends and neighbors around the area: one would give him a bull, another would give him two or three cows. And he finally accumulated around 150 head of cows over the years. And it was enough to make a living.
But one thing that I have noticed, that we are losing in a little ranching area like this: those people back then had a completely self-supporting environment on the ranch.
RW: I remember you talking about that with Leslie. [Mr. Palmer was interviewed previously by Leslie Morris.]
LP: Yeah.
[24:31]
RW: Orchards and the gardens and the hogs.
LP: Yeah.
RW: And the skills to produce it all.
LP: And chickens; they would buy little chickens that would come in through the postal service, there. And we would go to the post office, and hear those brand new chickens there. And we would take them over, and put them in a little brooder house that we had, with a little hood.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And keep them warm. And then raise them up, until they became – we would either choose whether they were going to be laying, and lay eggs for us, or else we would butcher them and use them to eat.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: But you know we’re losing that now. I let the old orchards go, and we had two of them over on our ranch. And let the orchards die. I still have a garden here, but we don’t have a garden over there.
RW: With the family, the gardening, and the ranch – Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 13
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: And the orchard, and all that – now you have – was it yourself, three brothers, and a sister?
LP: Yeah.
RW: So, how did the chores – were the older siblings doing more ranch work, and the younger children doing more home, garden, orchard work?
LP: Well, when I was born my youngest sister next to us in age, was 12 years old.
RW: Oh.
LP: And of course, she had her chores. Yeah, we all had our chores divided up amongst us; and I think she took the chickens, and we would – as we would get older, we would take over some of those things from her.
My oldest brother was 16 when I was born, and just started at Box Elder High School, in Brigham City. And then my next brother was two years younger (Rosa’s father); he went in when he was a freshman, and wanted to play football. So he left right shortly after my older brother.
So it was mainly left up to my sister, 12 years older than us. And of course, it didn’t take long and she was away to high school, too. And then it was left, just my parents and some little scrub twins running around, and helping with the chores.
Some of the chores would be chopping wood for our old wood stoves. Or my mother used to cook over those old, wood-fired ranges, out in the kitchen there. And of course, we had to keep enough wood in there to make sure that she could cook with it all the time. And so it was part of our responsibility to go and help our father gather wood in the fall of the year.
We have an abundance of juniper wood around, and also quaking aspen, pine up in the canyons. And so we would take off three or four days in the fall of the year, and go and gather that wood, and bring it. And then my dad had what we called and old buzz saw: it had a great, big huge blade that was probably three feet acrossed, hooked up to a tractor, and the tractor would spin the blade, and you would push the wood through it and saw the wood. And that was part of our chores.
RW: Um-hmm.
[27:43] Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 14
LP: And it would be a great, big pile of wood: probably eight, ten feet high, and just even through the pile is probably 10-15 feet through it. And that would be our supply of wood. And then they had a fireplace in the living room, and it would keep the house warm (before we got electric heat in there). And of course, it was less expensive than the electrical heat.
RW: How did it work, with your parents and you, you know – over the years as you got older – with the ranch, if you’re driving bus two times a day –
LP: Uh-huh.
RW: Who you know, especially during the busy time of the ranch, how did that all work out? With your calving or branding?
LP: Dad was usually around, but we all just pitched in and helped. I can remember getting up and walking about a quarter of a mile through the cedars, to the west of where the house was, where we had some heifers (some new heifers) that we needed to check, and make sure that they were going to calve okay. And so we would walk over there, and take a flashlight (or by moonlight), walk over there and count the cows. And if there was any of them down, trying to calve – well then, we would run back and get our dad, and he’d go over there, and we’d help her out. And a lot of times we’d get back over there, and she’d have had the calf while we were in the rush –
RW: [Laughing] Getting your dad.
LP: Of getting dad up and going, and that. We had an old time pump – you hand-pump the water for them, and then we had hay that we put up, loose –
RW: Do you still do your own haying?
LP: Yeah, yeah.
RW: Do you have one or two – how many hay fields do you have? What are your growing?
LP: It’s actually grass hay; we call it meadow hay.
RW: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
LP: And it’s the old, original wire grass. But then we’ve gone in and introduced some other grasses in with it, and some clovers. But it’s just one field – probably 150 acres of hay land.
RW: How much are you putting up?
[29:57] Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 15
LP: It depends; and that’s another hard part of ranching, is that we all have water rights out of these canyons –
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: But on our canyons, there, that we own the water rights out of – they just come out of the canyons, and run down a ditch. And so in the heat of the summer, depending on how much water comes out, and how much snow is placed up there in the winter time, and how much comes out in the spring – depends on how much hay you put up.
RW: I see.
LP: And that; so last year I had to buy about 75 ton of hay from a man over in Cache valley, to subsidize what hay I put up. We used to put it up loose, and then my dad bought a small, square baler.
RW: I see.
LP: And we would put it up that way, with hay wagons, and throw it up, off the ground, onto the hay wagons, and then it would go into the stack yard, and re-stack it into the stacks.
RW: Uh-huh. How big – are these manageable bales, that you can throw, or are you using some kind of piece of equipment to lift them?
LP: No, you just manually pick them up off the ground.
RW: Okay, uh-huh.
LP: And stack them.
RW: Because you see these humongous bales these days.
LP: Yeah, yeah.
RW: That weigh tons.
LP: And that’s what I’ve had to do, because of my problem with my back, is as soon as I took over the ranch, there, I went and bought a big, round baler.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: And then a tractor to pull it; and so –
RW: And so you’ve got the big, round bales now?
LP: Uh-huh. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 16
RW: That you can just roll on out –
LP: Yeah.
RW: When you’re feeding?
LP: It’s fun to do that, actually; you just go and clamp onto one of them, with a little hay feeder that I’ve got on the back of the tractor.
RW: Uh-huh.
[31:36]
LP: And take out, cut the strings, and then you let the bale down on the ground; it rolls out, just like your carpet does. And the cows just start eating it.
RW: How long does something like that last?
LP: Balers, or – machinery, hay?
RW: You laying it out? Is it going to last a day? Is that going to be gone in two days?
LP: It will be gone in about an hour.
RW: Hour?
LP: Yeah.
RW: Wow.
LP: Usually, we figure somewhere with the cattle – they’ll eat somewhere between 20 and 25 pounds of hay, per cattle – or, per cow.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Each day. And it kind of depends on if they have a calf on them, what their size are. But yeah, you can roll out one of those 1500 pound bales, and 100 head of cows will eat it within an hour, it’s all slicked up.
RW: Wow. What are you raising?
[32:30]
LP: As far as the breed of cows: Angus, primarily. My folks always had the Herefords; they had horned Herefords for a long time, and then they decided to go to pulled[??] Herefords. And then when my brother got married, his father-in-law had Angus bulls. And so we bought a couple Angus bulls from him, and so we’ve gone Angus. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 17
Actually, they feed out a little bit better, and you get a little bit more when you take them to the sale, and sell them that way, too. So, we’ve gone – I can probably count on two hands how many brown cows, Hereford cows that I’ve got in the herd now; all the rest of them are black.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And they’re hardy.
RW: Black Bally? Is that what you get when you cross the two?
LP: Yeah, you do; you get white-faced, black cows.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And they grow really fast; probably the best. They actually grow better that way, than if you have straight black, or if you have straight brown Hereford or Angus.
RW: Um-hmm. With the breed, do you have your own bulls?
LP: Uh-huh. Yeah, we go and buy our own bulls, we always have. I’ve thought about going in and artificially inseminated them; have a man come and do that, and then learn how to do it myself, and then go ahead and doing it myself. And I could, with the small amount of cows – around 100 head, you could do that fairly easy. But I think I’ll stick with buying bulls. We usually like to get somewhere around 15.
RW: So 15 to 100?
LP: No, you would have probably 15 cows to a bull; 15 to 20 cows to a bull.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: Especially on the range, in the summer time – where they’re scattered out over 1,000 acres.
RW: Uh-huh. What does your rangeland like? Are you running on deeded and BLM?
LP: Uh-huh. Primarily, all of it is deeded property, there; I think I’ve only got seven cow allotment on the forest, and the rest of it is private land. And that’s kind of limited me a little bit to how many cows I can put on there, but still I like to keep that little forest permit, because it allows me to run a few over on there. And whether they’ll ever increase your amount that you can put on there, I don’t know.
RW: How does that process work, to increase, to get a little bit more public lands, to graze?
[35:08] Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 18
LP: It’s pretty tough; somebody has to sell out, and want to sell their –
RW: Um-hmm; so are you around your allotment, are there others that have some allotments themselves?
LP: Um-hmm, yeah.
RW: And so you would have to buy – kind of checkerboard, and get so that they’re all together?
LP: Yep, yeah. Our neighbors, all the way around us, actually own forest permits on the forest, and they’re pretty stable right now. But even seven head is better than nothing. And they don’t charge that much for a summer’s rent on putting them on National Forest now, so it works out good.
RW: Do you have any BLM land?
LP: No. No, I don’t.
RW: With your situation with both the haying, and all the work with calving, and preg-checking, and you know, feeding –
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Are you doing that alone, or is your son coming to help, or are you hiring people?
LP: I’m hiring people to haul my cattle to the sale. I go to a commission auction, usually in either Logan or Smithfield, or over in the Burley area. And so I hire them to –
RW: Um-hmm – so you’re not selling through Superior? You’re taking –
LP: No. I would like to get up to that point, where I’m selling to Superior.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: Because they seem to be more secure; you have a little bit more say on what you get, rather than just showing up at the commission yard and say, “Give me what you want to.”
RW: Right.
LP: You actually have a say. And when I get my cattle up, a little over 100 head, to where I’m having a stable calf crop of an even calves –
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Where they’re born all pretty much the same time, and have an even weight on each on of the calves – around 100 head – then I’m going to definitely go with Superior, or some Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 19
other company that I can depend on the price being a little more stable than that other. But right now it’s working out fine.
Cattle prices seem to be up pretty good. Of course, hay prices are too. So I’ve got some projects going, hopefully within the next year or two, that I’d like to develop. That water coming out of the canyons, that we own the water rights to – maybe put it into some sprinkler systems, to where the water is a little bit more stable. I’m going to get away from paying six, eight, 12, $15,000 for hay each year, and be able to raise my own hay. And then that money that I would have used to buy the hay, I could just put into the ranch, and make it more profitable that way.
But yeah, I’m having my son, and my kids all come out. I have three girls, and two boys, and they’re all – all except my youngest one – they’re all married, and got grandkids (they’ve got kids). And so they all come out and help me gather the cows, and brand them.
RW: What’s your brand?
[38:23]
LP: It’s what we call the “V Open A”.
RW: Can you write that for me on your release form?
LP: Yeah. And so if you can turn the brand completely over, and it looks the same way. It is a V with an open A.
RW: I see.
LP: And so you can turn the brand over, and it’s still the V and an open A.
RW: Uh-huh. Do you earmark?
LP: No.
RW: Or tag?
LP: We tag the cattle – or the calves – and put a number in their tag of the year that they were born, and then which one they were.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: Like, if they were the 15th one we tagged, well their number is – like this year would be 11-12, and that, that we would use on them.
RW: Um-hmm. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 20
LP: And it works out pretty good when they grow up, the tags hopefully will stay in their ears. I keep as good of books as I can on the computer, and which ones are calving, which ones are not, how old they’re getting, when I need to sell them, and whatnot. But the small amount of cows that I’ve got now, I hope I can get it up to where it can sustain the family. My son is actually, will be taking over the ranch. He’s actually got such a good job right now, and it’s with the agricultural end. He works for Western Ag Credit.
RW: Oh.
LP: That is a loan agency.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: And a finance company for ranches and farms, and that, too. And so he’s kind of got into that. My oldest son actually works as a USDA meat inspector for – and works there in Hyrum.
RW: Okay, right; at Miller’s?
LP: Yeah; he’s actually the main supervisor over the USDA inspectors now. So my two boys have kind of gone into the agricultural end, and they come out as much as they can to try to help me out. Hopefully this younger son that’s married will come and take it over for me.
[40:34]
RW: Where will they live when they come on out?
LP: He will probably keep his job for as long as he needs to. He will live in the old house, my parent’s old house (the house that I grew up in); it’s comfortable, and he’ll probably live in it as long as he needs to. And then they’ve already got plans for a new home, right there in the old orchard, just south of that house. So they’ll live right there.
RW: Now, one of the things that’s been interesting this last – almost two years – that I’ve been doing these interviews is, many people do quite a bit to hold onto their lifestyle, and their ranching.
LP: Um-hmm, yep.
RW: Can you talk a little bit about that?
LP: Well, there’s the morals, the ethics in ranching, and farming – you’ll get them other places, but in big business it’s just not there anymore. And so, if you can hang onto that type of a living, type of a lifestyle; I was raised here, my dad was raised out here in a ranching situation, and I’m hoping that I can turn it over to where my family can continue Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 21
that way, because there’s nothing like having a chore to do in the morning, or at night, to teach you responsibility, of being dependable and going to work.
I’ll tell you a little story – we had some cattle in this other corral (that I was talking a few minutes ago about), and we needed to go over there and pump them some water. Well, it was pretty important that we take care of our livestock on the ranch, and dad instilled that in our minds, that we needed to do that. And so I’d gone to bed one night, without watering those cows (and pumping the water with an old hand pump), and giving them enough water to drink.
In the middle of the night, I had a dream that I got up, got my clothes on, and walked over there, and pumped them the water; it was instilled in my mind so strong. And so then I came back, took off my clothes, jumped into bed. And the next morning (and I had made a deal with my dad that if I watered the calves, then I would stack some rocks there, by the old pump, so that he would know that they were watered). And if he went and watered them before I got there, well he was going to stack some rocks up.
Well, I went and climbed into bed that night, and the next morning my dad came in and he says, “I don’t think you went and watered those cows in that corral there, and they’re thirsty. Could you run over and see first thing this morning?” So I jumped up and went over there. And there was rock stacked on the edge of the well, where I had got up. And that was proof to me and my dad that I had got up in the middle of the night, sleep-walking (more or less) and walked over there.
But it was instilled in our minds that way, and I think that’s a good basis of life, is the dependability that you’re going to do something when you’re asked to do it. And people can hang onto that, even after they leave the ranching business. If they choose to get an education, and get out into the world, at least they’ve got that ethics, and those morals, that they’ll stick with it. Like the old saying goes, “You can take a boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”
RW: Right.
[44:28]
LP: And he’ll instill those, and have those same abilities if he decides to be a corporate lawyer in the world, someplace in the world – he’ll still have those working habits, and work hard for it. I think that’s one thing. And then just the good, old hard work, I think is good for us all.
We’re having to take better track, and keep better books now days. When my grandfather came out here – yeah, he had some cattle, but he had a self-supporting ranch, with eggs, and milk, and meat, and whatnot on the place, to where the money was kind of an extra Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 22
thing, that he paid taxes with. But now days, with the cost of fuel, and the cost of power, and all of these costs, and we’re all running to town, rather than raising our own things in our gardens – we need to keep good books. If we don’t keep good books, it’s going to be pretty tough for us to keep these ranches afloat.
RW: Um-hmm. You know, one of the things I’ve noticed, talking to different ranchers, is the cost of fuel –
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Is really a big thing on a ranch.
LP: Yeah, it is.
RW: Because so much of your equipment.
LP: Yeah.
RW: And also, going back and forth to town when you’re so isolated.
LP: Yeah.
RW: Going to the doctor.
LP: Yeah.
RW: Going into – when you, you know, your kids’ maybe, music lessons.
LP: Yep; dance lessons.
RW: Can you talk a little bit about the access that you have now, maybe, versus what your grandparents or parents – the mobility?
LP: Yeah. Well, my dad – and I’ll tell a story, and it’s kind of a church-type story. He told me, he says – you know, when I was growing up, and the cars were – we could go into to town at least once a week. When I was really young, I can remember only once a month going in and buying supplies that we needed. We didn’t really need them.
But when he was growing up, they had the buggies, and the wagons that they had to get into town. The railroad came in, and they could use it – but it still cost them to go in. So a lot of times it took them at least two parts of days, anyway, to get into Brigham City. And so they would go as far as they could the first day, and plan on camping out on the north end of the Great Salt Lake there, at a fresh spring that they had there. And then the next morning, they’d go up, and go on into Brigham City, and spend a week, and then come back. And they’d leave one of the kids home to take of the chores, and whatnot. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 23
Well, people would get sick back then, and of course the only doctors were in Brigham City-Tremonton area. And this is one point I wanted to make: when they went to take them in, they would always give them a priesthood blessing, before they ever moved them, and started out, because they knew it was going to be a long time. And this is the point I wanted to make, too, along with it – dad said, “Now days if somebody gets sick, we throw them in the car, get them to the doctor, wait until they get stabilized, and then maybe give them priesthood blessing after that.” And he says, “It’s sure turned around from what it used to be. We always used to depend on other means to survive.”
RW: Um-hmm.
[48:05]
LP: And doctors are great; we need to get in and eventually see the doctors anyway. But my dad was born in the old house up here, helped out with a midwife (one of the ladies around that did that). Now days we rush them into the doctor and hope we make it in time, and whatnot.
And so the mobility of getting in, and access different things now days is – within an hour I can be to Tremonton.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: In a nice, comfortable car, in the winter time. I don’t know if our grandparents would appreciate seeing all of this; they probably would, really, because they would have liked to have seen progress. It was a lot harder, and we didn’t get into town. Even as a kid, when I was growing up in the ‘50s there, like I said – we would get into town, maybe once a month, to buy a few things.
RW: When you went to high school –
LP: Um-hmm?
RW: You went into Brigham, or Tremonton, to go to [high school]?
LP: Tremonton.
RW: Tremonton.
LP: Yeah.
RW: So it was you, and your twin brother both went – I’m assuming?
LP: Um-hmm, um-hmm.
RW: Where did you live? Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 24
LP: I lived with Rosa’s father, my older brother [Paul Palmer].
RW: Did you?
LP: Right there.
RW: Did you, and your brother, both?
LP: Uh-huh. But my older brothers and sisters – they went to Box Elder High School in Brigham City.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And my grandma was there.
RW: I see.
LP: My mother’s mother was there.
RW: Okay.
LP: And she was about a block away from the high school. And so they would go in, and so sometimes they wouldn’t get back out here, back then, for you know, every weekend (like we do); they’d have to catch a ride.
RW: So when you were a boy, did you come back every weekend and help out?
LP: Pretty much, um-hmm.
RW: Because I’m thinking, you know, your older siblings –
LP: Um-hmm?
RW: There were some at home still, but when you and your brother left, your parents were out here alone.
LP: Yep.
RW: Did they have to hire out during those years, more?
LP: No; Dad tried to take care of it, as long as his health stayed there, and mom would be right out there in the field to help him out, feeding the sheep, doing all the chores. But then if they needed us – of course, we had the telephones then, they’d telephone us, and we’d run out in the car and help them out for a day or two, and skip school. But most of the time they did okay. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 25
RW: Did the school system allow for some of these ranch families to be able to keep their kids home at different times, when they were needed?
LP: No, we were treated like everybody else; if we got behind, we had to make it up too.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And had to make it right with the schools and that.
RW: Did you have to miss some school, though, off and on?
LP: Occasionally, yeah.
RW: Um-hmm.
[50:51]
LP: Occasionally, during this time of the year – in January, February, March – when dad was calving the cattle out, then we’d have to come out and spend a couple of days, and help him (and of course, every weekend). And we looked forward to it. I couldn’t have found a nicer thing to do on the weekends by staying in there, than I could by coming out here. And get some good, home-cooking (although Paul’s wife, you know, was a good cook too), but still there is nothing like coming home and having mom’s home cooking.
And when we went back into school, we felt like we’d accomplished something. We’d been out here, had some fresh air, done some good, hard work, and was ready to go back to school.
RW: In the community here in Park Valley, what community cohesiveness – I mean, is there 4-H?
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Can you talk a little bit about the ranch community activities that go around with ranching?
LP: Um-hmm. Okay, I actually brought a picture up. We formed a livestock 4-H club when I was what – 12, 13. My folks actually went to the county extension agent and asked if we could set one up. And so we set it up there. And the picture that I brought was, we had our own little livestock show, and kind of our own, little community fair one day out here, and it was held over in an orchard. And we would bring our calves, or our lambs (or whatever we had), our pigs, or whatever we were raising as a project, and bring them to that little orchard there, and that certain day. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 26
And then we had somebody – our 4-H leaders were Ed and Diane Mott that lived over on the Muddy Ranch. And they were really good leaders, they were just super; I learned so much from them.
RW: What kinds of things? What did you learn? What did you do?
LP: Well, how to ration feed out, how much grain you should feed, how much hay you should feed.
RW: Did you go out to their ranch to learn these things?
LP: No, they came around to our ranches, and actually looked at our projects. We would either have a calf, or a lamb in a pen, in under the shed, or somewhere – and they would come and say, “Well, you need to put a little more grain into them.” Or, “Put a little more grass into them.” Or, “You need to feed them a little more water.”
When the sugar factory was going there, in Garland there, we’d get beet pulp, and bring it out, and feed it along with them: any kind of supplement that we could use, and then we would feed them out. We’ve changed the breed of animals; we’ve gone from good, old Hereford calves, to a lot of Angus calves anymore, and maybe some of the hybrid calves, too. And then we’ve gone (from when I was growing up) to Hampshire lambs, to Suffolk now, and a little bit of Southtown, and some other breeds in them too.
[54:18]
But we would have this day that we would bring all those animals there, and we would have a judge that would come out from Tremonton, Brigham City area. And they would set them up, and show us how to show them – fitting, and show them, and ship – that we would have there. We would have a little food stand there, and we’d all eat at a certain time of the day, and it was really fun. And our 4-H leaders pretty well set it up, and we all were a part of that.
RW: How many children were at the school then? Was it much bigger than now? Did you have a bigger –
LP: About the same.
RW: Was it?
LP: I would think that our population, here at the school, has been primarily the same way all through the years.
RW: How many children are at the school now? Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 27
LP: I think somewhere in the 50s, or 60s. It’s always been kind of that way; when I was a kid, about that same number. And that goes from kindergarten, through the tenth grade. And then, of course, like we talked – we would go into high school at the eleventh and twelfth grade.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: It’s been pretty stable; the same all the way through. I think they have somewhere around 50, 58 kids that are students that are here right now, and two teachers.
RW: And you’re pooling from Park Valley –
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: Are you getting kids from Rosette, or anywhere else?
LP: Yeah. I used to go clear out to the Muddy Ranch –
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: And pick up the students that were out there, and then I’d bring them in, and just work my way in – stopping at homes, and bringing them in. Right now, I’m just going out into the Dove Creek area, which is a little (kind of subdivision) that –
RW: Yeah; I was real surprised today, when I showed up here – there’s two buses!
LP: Um-hmm, yeah.
RW: How does that work? Does one of you go to –
LP: My wife goes east, and down to the Kelton area.
RW: Okay.
LP: And picks up the kids from the east, and brings them to school; and then I go to the west and pick up the kids from Rosette and that Dove Creek area.
RW: Okay.
LP: And bring them to school. And we meet here about the same time. My wife is the cook, here at the school, also. She’s also a registered nurse, and has worked with the Bear River Health Department. She gives them their shots at times of the year. She helped the ladies out here, for a long time, with the WIC program.
RW: Does she have like, hours, that people can come in and apply for WIC, and get their vouchers? Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 28
LP: Um-hmm, yeah.
RW: Interesting. I know she’s also been instrumental in the – not the ambulance, but the –
LP: With the EMT system.
RW: EMT, yeah.
LP: With the EMT system.
RW: Yeah, I’m going to do some e-mail questions with her.
LP: Yeah. She started that out. A lady that she was in school with (at Holy Cross Hospital), and nursing school in Salt Lake – a lady asked her to come out and teach a first aid class first. And then after that, well then they developed the first – there was enough interest that they developed an EMT course. And then an Intermediate EMT course; and I think that’s what they have out here now.
My wife worked on it for, probably 20 years.
RW: Interesting.
LP: And then got to the age that she wanted to kind of give it up, and there was enough interest with the younger people out here, that they picked it up and did that. But she enjoyed that part of her life. I sometimes think that I took her out of a really important thing that she had in her life.
She came out of Rexburg, Idaho area, and went down as a young girl, and got her RN license. And then I let her work until I met her.
RW: [Laughs]
[58:18]
LP: It had been two years after she graduated, and she was working in Intensive Care, with open-heart surgery patients; really knew her stuff, really well. And I married her, and brought her out here; and she’s really tried to do what she could in the medical field, to try to help out the community, and help people out coming through here. But I feel as though that I kind of took her out of a thing that was really in her heart. And she wanted to; but she’s enjoyed coming out here, too, being able to deal with it.
Of course, like I said a few minutes ago, she’s had to pick up a teaching aide job up here. And then when that started to go away, then she decided more stable to be the cook. So now she’s the cook for the school; cooks for those 60 kids, and a few teachers every day. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 29
RW: So she’s up in the morning, driving bus, doing the cooking, and then driving the bus at the end of the day.
LP: Yeah.
RW: And you’re driving bus morning and evening?
LP: Yeah, taking care of the ranch.
RW: And taking care of your ranch. You know, right now you’ve got your cattle, and you’ve got some sheep?
LP: No, we sold out the sheep several years ago; my dad – right after he passed away. They’re a little more temperamental, and take a little bit more work.
RW: I see.
LP: And that, so we sold them several years ago. So all I’ve got is cattle, and of course, a few horses.
RW: Um-hmm. Do you work quite a bit on horseback?
LP: No, that’s kind of gone away. I can’t do it myself, but I’ve still got four or five horses there, that we can ride. I get my son and daughters, and their families, and they get on the horses, and use them. I’ve got my “Japanese horse,” I call it (my ATV).
RW: [Laughs]
[60:11]
LP: And I jump on my Japanese horse and run around. And when I’m out here on my own, that’s my only way that I can check on the cattle up on the mountain, or fix fences, and whatnot.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: It’s actually quicker than horses, although horses still have their places on ranches.
RW: Um-hmm. Well, we were talking about the 4-H when you were a boy –
LP: Um-hmm?
RW: What kinds of traditions, activities in the valley do families participate in, that have a function on the ranch?
LP: 4-H was actually the main one away from the church, that wasn’t sponsored by the church. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 30
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: In small communities like this, the church is kind of the sponsor of the sports programs.
RW: Um-hmm. Let’s talk about that then; let’s talk about the church and the different activities that it offers.
LP: Yeah. It has their sports activities there: you play basketball, softball, volleyball, and whatever.
RW: Who are they playing?
LP: We would go into Tremonton, into Garland area, and play the teams there. Through the school we actually played some of the neighboring schools, basketball; and we had our track meets here. We still have track meets out here, that we enjoy going to (they do field events, and running, and whatnot), and that’s still sponsored through the school. But then the sports activities mainly have been through the church.
RW: I see.
LP: And of course, our road shows, our drama, and part of the church involved with that. We always have had a 24th of July celebration – a pioneer celebration, if you will, out here. It’s getting bigger all the time. We have our park and our bowery here that we use, our rodeo grounds. We have a good dance the night before, with a band that comes in and plays live music for us. We will dance, we have a steak fry. Of course, being in the business, we like to have our beef steaks. So we have beef steaks here.
RW: Where does the beef come from? Does somebody donate?
LP: Yep. Last year the hamburger was all donated by a family out here that raised – it was a leppy calf.
RW: Uh-huh.
LP: He didn’t know who the owner was – it could have been mine, it could have been his, it could have been my neighbor’s, or it could have been another one of our neighbors. He just took it, and raised it out from a little leppy calf, up until about 700 pounds. We butchered it, and used all the hamburger out of it for our celebration, so it didn’t cost us.
The steaks that we get is actually bought from a man that comes out here, and has a portable butcher plant. He brings a truck out here, and actually kills the animals, and hangs them up, and skins them out, and hangs them in a cooler until he gets into to town. And they hang for – oh, a couple of weeks – and then you call in and tell them how you want your beef cut up. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 31
RW: So you are selling the majority in an auction, but you’re holding back one, two?
LP: We are; we save enough beef for us. In fact, my daughter and her husband live up in Heber, and they’ve kind of got a family project, with the Park family (with my daughter’s husband’s family), where they buy 13 or 14 calves from us, and they’ll take them up and put them on the little place they’ve got up there (the little farm). Throw them some hay that’s extra hay (they’ll buy that hay from their dad). And then they’ll throw that in there, and they’ll raise out their calves.
And they just butchered them this fall – nice, big 1200 pound beef, that’s taken them about a year to raise out. And so they’ve kind of picked up with that kind of an idea, that’s pretty good stuff, to have a good beef steak every once in a while. So, they’ve picked that up. And then I keep two or three beef for the remainder of my kids, and for myself. We always have what beef we need. And of course, I like my ham too.
RW: [Laughs]
LP: And my bacon, and whatnot, and my chicken, and that. So we’ll pick that up other ways.
RW: I see.
LP: And that, too. I wish I could raise them out myself, but I’d have to buy them, and then buy feed to feed them right now. So the cost effectiveness of it isn’t good. So it pays for me to buy it this other way. But where I’ve got beef, I like to –
RW: Do you ever trade out with folks? Has that ever been something that ranchers in your area have done?
LP: Like for different other services?
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: I do. You know, we’ve got an orthodontist and dentist in the Brigham and Tremonton area (he’s in both areas, has an office in both of them). And when my kids needed braces for their teeth, we would say, you know, “How much is the bill going to be? Would you take a half a beef for that?” And he’d say, “Yes.” And he’d take that half a beef off the bill that we owed for the braces on the teeth, and then he’d spread the beef around amongst his staff in the doctor’s office. And so we’ve done that before, too.
RW: Um-hmm.
LP: I haven’t done anything else with trading.
RW: That’s neat.
LP: It is. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 32
[65:57]
RW: Well, I’ve been asking folks, you know, what do you see in the future of ranching? From your perspective? You’ve seen a change –
LP: Um-hmm.
RW: From being a little boy.
LP: Yeah.
RW: Especially like, with the video auction, or with various other kinds of things.
LP: Yeah.
RW: What do you see as the future of ranching?
LP: I still think it’s strong. I think that we have to sharpen our pencil, or get the calculator out to make sure that we’re going to balance the books, anymore, and keep that pencil pretty sharp. But I think there’s definitely a need for ranching. I think that we’ve got our fast food, little stands there, that we all love our hamburgers. And I think there’s – and other countries has even picked that up. And so I think that’s it’s a needful thing.
I think right now, if you sharpen your pencil good and sharp, and try to do some projects on your ranch, that is going to feed your animals a little bit longer (and help you out that way), you start developing some programs that is developed through the universities and the extension deal; they’ve been proven, you might as well use some of those. Like we were talking a few minutes ago – going from cows that get less money out of their calves, to cows that you know, Angus calves, that would bring you a little bit more.
And the calf market – we always wish it would be higher, but right now (this last fall) I took some calves to the sale, to the auction, and I caught it just on the right day, and I got the most that I’ve ever got out of calves. I got $1.60 a pound. But I was looking on the internet (which most of us have internets), and this is new technology. And I was looking on the internet on this Burley Livestock Auction that some of us take our cattle too. And they’re still up around $1.60-$1.65 a pound.
So they’re staying up there good enough, that I think that if we are wise in our expenditures, and wise in how we use our money, and try to save as much as we can for lean years, I think we’re still going to be good. I’m really hopeful. I wouldn’t have my son leave a bank executive part that he has right now, and come out here, if I didn’t think that it was going to be that way.
He might have to hang onto that job for a few years, until he gets far enough ahead; maybe a house built, and a little bit of money in the bank (to take care of lean years). But Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 33
I’m confident that if we can keep working on our numbers, on our cattle; maybe have to buy a piece of ground to add to the ranch, so that we can increase our herd a little bit. And then improve our water, to where we can put up our own hay – become a little more self-supporting.
I’m sure that’s it’s going to be a good business for a long time; I would hope. Of course, ranchers and farmers are the most optimistic people in the world, I think.
[Laughing]
[69:22]
And so I think if we keep that attitude, along with a little help along the way (with the economics), and watching where we spend, and try to develop some of these ideas that I’ve said – I think that we’re going to be fine.
RW: Well, thank you.
LP: Yeah.
RW: Well, as you’ve been thinking about us coming out here, are there some things that you wanted to share, that I haven’t asked you?
LP: I think I’ve pretty well covered them.
RW: Okay.
LP: I think I have.
RW: Okay.
LP: Inheriting, or taking over a ranch that my dad had bought is really good for my mind, my thoughts – that I’m able to do something that my dad did, and maybe do it a little bit better (hopefully), than what he did (even though he did really well).
But like I was saying through our conversation: the work ethics, the morals that ranchers/farmers has, being good neighbors to their neighbor, helping their neighbor out – I think if that would spread around the world a little bit more, now days, I think that we would all be a little happier. We could turn on the evening news and see a lot more positive than what we do now days, with the world that it is.
I’m just glad to be in the occupation that I’m in.
RW: Well, thank you. I really appreciate, not only your interview today, but helping me set up all these other interviews. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Lynn Palmer Page 34
LP: You bet.
RW: You’ve been instrumental.
LP: Yeah.
RW: I’ll turn this off, and we’ll sign these release forms.
LP: Okay.
[End recording – 70:56]